Metabolomics: An Emerging Technology for Soybean Improvement

Metabolomics is one of the most emerging technologies being used for crop improvement. It allows a comprehensive understanding of complex networks of biological processes, which will certainly help to accelerate the sustainable crop production. In a short time, valuable efforts have been made in developing high-throughput instruments, online tools, and databases for its global application. Soybean is the most widely grown protein/oilseed crop in the world and also used as processed foods, raw material for industrial and pharmaceutical applications and for the production of biodiesel. Due to the high demand for soybean, metabolomics has been applied to understand plant response to different biotic and abiotic stresses and to improve soybean yield. Currently, there is a demand for the development of computational tools and databases for data processing and analysis of metabolic information. Although several large-scale datasets for other ‘omics’ approaches (such as genomics and transcriptomics) are publicly available, very few studies have been conducted to integrate the genomics–metabolomics approaches to identify QTL/genes. In an effort to comprehend the current scenario and prospects in soybean metabolomics, this chapter highlights the details of soybean metabolomics studies and advances being made to improve environmental stress tolerance. In addition, we discuss pros and cons of different metabolomics approaches. The potential integrated approaches incorporating genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, ionomics, and metabolomics for soybean improvement were also discussed.